I'm watching VH1 Rock Honors right now. They're honoring The Who. Which is making me remember how freaking awesome a band they are. Sheesh.

I'm psyched cuz Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Flaming Lips, etc are gonna play their stuff. Anyone catch this special? The songs sound SO fresh. Any of them could have been written just today. Well, actually, no one writes stuff that good anymore, so maybe not.

Jack Black: The Beatles never sang a song called BEA-TLES, BEA-TLES!

Heh.

Who fans?

"love reign over me....reign..over me..."

Incubus totally ruining two great Who songs. I Can See For Miles and I Can't Explain. And the drummer is WAY out of his league. I think all of the drummers are going to have a hard time of it though.

The Who rock! Jimmy was discovered by Pete, you know.

Quoted from JimmyMcCullochFan

The Who rock! Jimmy was discovered by Pete, you know.

Which Jimmy are you referring to?  At first I thought you meant Page, but then I noticed you have a reference to Jimmy McCollough in your post.

Okay, I'm assuming you mean McCullough.  Didn't notice what you name was.  Sorry!

And Sandra, the quote from Jack Black ("The Beatles never sang a song called "Bea-tles! Bea-tles!") -- is that a reference to "Who are You?"  And when did he say it?  In a movie, or was he on the VH1 show?

Quoted from Mr. Mustard

Okay, I'm assuming you mean McCullough.  Didn't notice what you name was.  Sorry!

And Sandra, the quote from Jack Black ("The Beatles never sang a song called "Bea-tles! Bea-tles!") -- is that a reference to "Who are You?"  And when did he say it?  In a movie, or was he on the VH1 show?

Yeah, he was referring to Who Are You?. It was from the intro when they had a bunch of famous people talk about why the Who are great. It was interesting seeing what Billy Idol looks like these days. Took me a minute to recognize him!

Roger's voice is still pretty good too, but man, Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam BLEW the audience away. That guy has an amazing voice.

I still think it's odd that they tour under the name The Who with just the two of them, but Roger actually explained it in a nice way.

I love "Won't Get Fooled Again " , i share my Birthday with Roger

Does anyone really think they somehow started punk? I'm not sure about that one, but I get the arguments.

I'm making this a sticky. Not because I started it, but because I think the Who deserves to be stickied. I mean if MUSE is a sticky! Well you get my point. I also merged the two Doors threads. If there are other Who threads, I'll gladly merge them. I just didn't see another.

"The Who Sells Out"- really the first concept album, don't you think? Didn't this one predate Pepper?

It's a controversial topic. But I think Pepper came out slightly before The Who Sell Out. Not sure of the exact dates. Zappa fans always claim he did it first. And maybe so, who knows. Some info:

Perhaps the first examples from rock were the albums of The Ventures. Starting from 1961's Colorful Ventures (each song had a color in the title), the group was known for issuing records throughout the 1960s whose tracks revolved around central themes, including surf music, country, outer space, TV themes, and psychedelic music.[9]

In 1966, several rock releases were arguably concept albums in the sense that they presented a set of thematically-linked songs - and they also instigated other rock artists to consider using the album format in a similar fashion: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds was a masterful musical portrayal of Brian Wilson's state of mind at the time (and a major inspiration to Paul McCartney). Although it has a unified theme in its emotional content, the writers (Brian Wilson and Tony Asher) have said continuously that it was not necessarily intended to be a narrative. However, later in 1966, Brian Wilson had begun work on the Smile album, which was intended as a narrative. The album was scrapped before completion, only to be revived in the 2000s. The Mothers of Invention's sardonic farce about rock music and America as a whole, Freak Out!; and Face to Face by The Kinks, the first collection of Ray Davies's idiosyncratic character studies of ordinary people. However, none of these attracted a wide commercial audience.

This all changed with the Beatles' celebrated album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in June 1967. With the release of Sgt. Pepper, the notion of the concept album came to the forefront of the popular and critical mind, with the earlier prototypes and examples from classic pop and other genres sometimes forgotten. The phrase entered the popular lexicon, and a "concept album" - the term became imbued with the notion of artistic purpose - was inherently considered to be more creative or worthy of attention than a mere collection of new songs. This perception of course related to the intent of the artist rather than the specific content.

In fact, as pointed out by many critics since its original reception, Sgt. Pepper is a concept album only by some definitions of the term. There was, at some stage during the making of the album an attempt to relate the material to firstly the idea of aging, then as an obscure radio play about the life of an ex-army bandsman and his shortcomings. These concepts were lost in the final production. While debate exists over the extent to which Sgt. Pepper qualifies as a true concept album, there is no doubt that its reputation as such helped inspire other artists to produce concept albums of their own, and inspired the public to anticipate them. Lennon and McCartney distanced themselves from the "concept album" tag as applied to that album.[10]

The Who Sell Out followed with its concept of a pirate radio broadcast. Within the record, joke commercials recorded by the band and actual jingles from recently outlawed pirate radio station Wonderful Radio London were interspersed between the songs, ranging from pop songs to hard rock and psychedelic rock, culminating with a mini-opera titled "Rael"

In any case, you can't deny that they're both great albums. With Sgt. Pepper I find I can listen to the songs on their own. Not so much with "Sells Out". So.

Plus they came out within, I think weeks of each other and John always said Pepper wasn't really a concept album. So once again the Who are robbed of credit!! Kind of unfair really.

I think they are probably one of the most underrated bands of the Sixties. You hardly ever see them being mentioned in the classic rock magazines, yet they did so much. Most people know them as the guys who did the CSI theme song.